The Lost World: Jurassic Park

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The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a 1997 movie and sequel to the blockbuster Jurassic Park. The film was adapted by David Koepp from Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World, and was directed by Steven Spielberg.

Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough reprise their roles from the previous film. They are joined by Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn and Arliss Howard.

Also released in 1997 was an arcade video game released under the name The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Contents

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Plot summary

Image:Jchase.jpg

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Four years have passed since the disaster at Jurassic Park, and John Hammond no longer leads InGen. The company is taken over by his nephew, Peter Ludlow. Ian Malcolm, meanwhile, despite having signed an agreement that forbade him from ever divulging any information on his visit to Isla Nublar, reveals that InGen cloned dinosaurs for use in a theme park, which almost destroys his credibility as he cannot support his claims under InGen's threat of legal action.

John Hammond calls for Malcolm's help. Seemingly, animals on Isla Nublar are dead, but InGen had a second island, named Isla Sorna, where the original research was performed. A hurricane forced an evacuation of this island, and dinosaurs continue to thrive there. Peter Ludlow persuades InGen's investors that a dinosaur theme park is still a profitable idea, and makes plans to move into this second island and capture the animals to bring them to San Diego, where InGen is finishing construction on a Jurassic Park arena. Hammond, on the other hand, is trying to prevent this: if he gathers a team of experts to document the dinosaurs in their habitat, they might save those animals from a life of captivity. Malcolm initially refuses, but then learns that his girlfriend, paleontologist Sarah Harding, is already on the island by herself. He agrees to go in an attempt to convince Sarah to leave. As he prepares for the trip we are introduced to his daughter, Kelly.

The rest of Hammond's team consists of Malcolm, engineer Eddie Carr (who built the custom vehicles the team use, including two solar-powered Mercedes SUVs and a special trailer including a mobile laboratory), and wildlife documentary maker Nick Van Owen. They arrive at the island and find Sarah in the wild, taking photographs. After escaping an alarmed Stegosaurus herd, the group returns to their camp site to find Kelly, who had snuck into the trailer before it left for the island. Malcolm, furious, tries to contact the boat which brought them to Isla Sorna. Unfortunately this is interrupted as InGen has officially now sent their second team to the island to hunt down and capture the dinosaurs that inhabit it for transportation back to InGen's facilities.

Image:Lostworldjurassicparkt-rex.jpg InGen's hunters arrive with custom vehicles and equipment, carried by helicopters. InGen's team is led by hunter Roland Tembo and his aide Ajay Sidhu, and mercenaries are led by Dieter Stark. The team's consultant is paleontologist Robert Burke.

By the time night falls, the InGen team has already captured several dinosaurs, mostly herbivores. As Ludlow prepares for a satellite video transmission to the InGen board Nick reveals to the rest that Hammond insisted if Ludlow showed up he was to free the animals if they were captured. Nick and Sarah then sneak into the camp to free the captive dinosaurs and cut the fuel lines on the hunter jeeps. In the ensuing carnage, car explosions set off fires which quickly spread through the camp. One burning vehicle is jettisoned into the air, and nearly kills Ajay and Tembo.

Tembo, meanwhile, is hunting for his most sought-after trophy; a male Tyrannosaurus. He uses the baby T-rex that he captured and Ludlow injured, waiting for the animal to save his offspring. He hears the rumble back in InGen settlement. Together with Sidhu, he leaves for the camp. Nick finds and frees the baby, and brings it back to the trailer so that he and Sarah can set the baby's broken leg. Malcolm, Kelly, and Eddie hide in a "high hide," an observation platform that can be hoisted to the treetops. Malcolm returns to the trailer just before the T-Rex parents arrive in search of their child. Sarah returns the baby to its parents, who leave, only to return a few moments later to attack the trailer. The adult T-Rexes leave after forcing the trailer into a position where it's hanging off a cliff with Malcolm, Nick, and Sarah trapped inside. Eddie decides to help, and leaves Kelly alone in the high hide. He takes the other SUV and rides to the trailer. He ties a rope to one of the trees and throws it down to Malcolm, Sarah and Nick. Eddie then hooks the SUV to the trailer and tries to pull it back. The T-Rex parents return and manage to kill Eddie. The trailer falls down the cliff, but its occupants manage to survive holding the rope Eddie tied to the tree. The InGen team finds and helps them climb back up.

Without a choice, Malcolm, Sarah, Nick and Kelly join the rival InGen team, because the animal attack destroyed all communications equipment and now they have to migrate to the formerly inhabited InGen operations building, so they can use the communications center to radio for help. Ludlow warns that the center is a preferred Velociraptor nesting site.

On a hike to the center, Dieter is killed by Compsognathus when he leaves the settlement during a break, and the others fail to notice. At night, the group's camp is attacked by Tyrannosaurus, and several people, including Burke, are killed during this attack. The survivors continue their journey, and Raptors ambush the group as they go through a high and dense rush-bed, killing many mercenaries and Sidhu, who was trying to stop others from going through the long grass.

Image:Mercedes-w163-the-lost-world.jpg Malcolm and his friends run for the buildings while raptors are busy with others. Nick rushes into the building and radios for help, while Malcolm, Sarah and Kelly manage to survive a raptor attack. A rescue helicopter takes them away, and on the flight they see that Tembo has incapacitated the male Tyrannosaur with two tranquilizer darts, and it is being prepared to be shipped to the mainland. Ludlow also orders the baby Tyrannosaur to be found and brought back to San Diego.

InGen invites all prestigious investors to the docks to witness the arrival of the Tyrannosaur. The ship does not slow down, and crashes into the dock. Guards board the ship and find that crew members have been killed. A guard opens the cargo door in an attempt to look for survivors and the Tyrannosaur storms out of the cargo bay, and heads into San Diego.

Malcolm and Sarah ask Ludlow, who is in total shock, where the baby is. Ludlow says that the baby was brought by plane, and is at the zoo complex. Malcolm drives to the complex and picks up the baby, while the adult Tyrannosaur runs wild through the city. Malcolm and Sarah bait the creature with its baby. They drive back to the docks and place the baby dinosaur into the cargo hold of the ship. Ludlow sees them, and follows them into the cargo hold. Malcolm and Sarah escape the ship as Ludlow tries to take the baby back. The Tyrannosaur rushes into the cargo hold; meanwhile Sarah prepares the sedative dart gun and veterinary tranquilizers, and shoots the T-Rex as Malcolm closes the cargo hold door, trapping the animal inside. Ludlow becomes a meal for the baby Rex.

Finally Malcolm, Sarah and Kelly rest in their home, in front of the TV, which is showing the ship cruising back to the island. John Hammond is then interviewed, pleading that the island be preserved and isolated, for the dinosaurs require human absence in order to best survive.

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Differences from the Novel

Also contains spoilers for Jurassic Park.

It should be noted that the list of people who survived to the end of the book version of Jurassic Park differs from the survivor count in the movie. It appears that Crichton may have killed some of the characters in between the two books to make the book version of The Lost World compatible with the ending of Jurassic Park, the movie. Consider:

Name Status at the end of JP (Book) Status at the end of JP (Movie) Status at the beginning of LW (Book)
Ian Malcolm Died of a leg wound Escaped wounded Saved by physicians, though crippled
Donald Gennaro Escaped with bite from velociraptor Eaten by T-Rex Died of dysentery between books (probably from his wounds)
John Hammond Killed by dinosaurs while denying his park is a failure Left on a helicopter, repenting for his creation Dead
Robert Muldoon Escaped unharmed Killed by velociraptors Not mentioned

Either deliberately or by serendipity, this gave the two movies a closer continuity in the sense of character deaths; however the novels are still considered to be in their own continuity altogether.

The film version of The Lost World is radically different than that of the novel. The InGen hunters replace Lewis Dodgson and his two henchmen as the villains in the movie, and neither Dodgson nor Biosyn are mentioned. Certain characters were eliminated for the movie version (Richard Levine and Jack Thorne, though they were in early drafts) and instead made into a composite character, Nick Van Owen. (Interestingly, Eddie Carr in the movie is more like Jack Thorne in the novel than the novel's Carr, and Nick in the movie is more representative of Carr in the novel.) Additional attributes of the novel's Levine were also given to Sarah Harding for the movie version; most notably, the character's career (in the novel, Levine was the group's token paleontologist and Harding was an animal behaviorist. For the movie, Harding became a "behavioral paleontologist"). The two stowaway children from the novel were also made into one character, Malcolm's daughter (whose name, Kelly Curtis, was that of the girl from the novel).

Most of the character exposition presented in the novel, including their motivations and their relationships and histories with each other, were vastly condensed, altered, or eliminated altogether for the movie.

The vehicles in the book are Ford Explorers and in the movie they are both Mercedes-Benz ML320 W163 models.

Most significantly, there is no T-Rex rampage through San Diego in the novel.

The characters and plot lines kept from the novel include Malcolm's return, Sarah Harding, Eddie Carr, the mobile laboratory trailers, and the plot involving the baby tyrannosaur and its parents.

Some shots and sequences in the movie were actually taken from the original Jurassic Park novel rather than the Lost World novel. These include the opening scene featuring the young girl encountering compies on a beach (although the incident in the book took place in Costa Rica's mainland, not in the island itself, as the movie suggests) and the tyrannosaurus feeling for prey through a waterfall with its tongue.

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Dinosaurs Featured

These are dinosaurs confirmed to be on Isla Sorna in the Lost World movie:

These are dinosaurs confirmed to be on Isla Sorna in the Lost World novel:



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Sexual Dimorphism

Since many of the film's Dinosaurs have been presumabely breeding for a while, there are now male Dinosaurs among Isla Sorna's population. sexual dimorphism is reflected in a few of the film's Dinosaurs, most notably the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, whereas the Dinosaurs seen in Jurassic Park were all female. The Male Tyrannosaurus is seen as much bulkier and in a different color scheme than the female T-rex, who appears much like her JP counterpart (But with a slightly different color scheme). The Male Velociraptors, likewise, are seen with tiger stripes as oppossed to the brownish/grey JP cousins. There is also a subtle color difference between the Parasaurlophus.

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Box office

This film broke many box office records upon its release on May 23rd, 1997. It took an incredible $72.1 million gross on its opening weekend ($92.6 million for the four-day Memorial Day holiday) in the US, which was by far the biggest opening weekend taking at the time. It also took the highest single day box office taking of $26.1 million on Sunday, May 25th, and it became the fastest film to pass the $100 million mark, achieving the feat in just five and a half days. The film eventually ended up grossing $620 million worldwide, becoming (at the time) the sixth highest-grossing film of all time.

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Trivia

  • The movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Visual Effects.
  • Spielberg was approached by the producers of Swingers who needed the director's approval for use of the theme from Jaws. Spielberg asked to see footage of the clip that would eventually feature the music, which featured Vince Vaughn, who caught the director's eye. Spielberg soon offered Vaughn a part in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which provided a breakout role for Vaughn.
  • Spielberg suggested the T-Rex attack through San Diego be added to the film story, inspired by similar attack scene of a Brontosaurus in London in the 1925 film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. This replaced the original ending, featuring an extended Raptor sequence and an attack by Pteranodons while escaping from the Island. Instead of the CNN news footage of the Rex returning to the island, the final scene would have been Hammond's funeral, where Malcolm delivers a eulogy. The Dinosaurs would remain undiscovered by the general public.
  • This was nominated for "Best Action Sequence" in the MTV Movie Awards 1997 for the part where the T. Rex is destroying San Diego looking for his son.
  • This was the first film to feature Universal's then new and current logo.
  • The ship S.S. Venture transporting a Tyrannosaurus rex to San Diego is reminiscent of another ship with the same name transporting the last Megaprimatus kong to New York in the King Kong.
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Reaction

Although the film did well box-office wise, it received mostly negative reviews. Many of the reviews centered on the character's reckless and foolish actions (Example: Sarah carrying the vest with the infant Rex blood even though she knew the Rex could track it), the character of Kelly (Who uses gymnastics to attack a velociraptor) and the Rex's rampage through San Diego, which was not in the book and is used partially for comic relief. There was also disappointment expressed at the reduced role of the Velociraptors and the location shooting, which used a redwood forest to depict a South pacific island. The next sequel, Jurassic Park III, would go for a style closer to the original film.

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External links

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